It is so awesome to see with new eyes the awesome things that God is doing in the ministry of World Relief and the churches we are privileged to empower. I want to start this update off with a big praise to God for the success of our first Job Skills Workshop over this past weekend. 40 refugees attended, with over 20 volunteers investing into them on Saturday afternoon. Several of the volunteers participated for the first time, and are excited to have more regular involvement. We are so thankful for the hundreds of volunteer hours that were given to make this event a big success. Now we’re praying for many job opportunities as a result of the training that took place!
God is doing tremendous things in many other areas, and we have some very specific prayer needs to ask you to faithfully lift up to our Father:
- Pray for continued growth in church involvement, both in numbers of churches involved, and the scope of involvement that each church engages in. Specifically, we are planning to have a conference toward the end of April, called “A Biblical Perspective on Immigrants,” and would really appreciate your prayers for a strong host church, and very strong promotion of this important event among the churches in the RDU area.
- I mentioned before that we recently applied for a large grant in order for our office to be able to provide comprehensive employment services to our refugees. We anticipate hearing back about this by the first week of February. Please pray that we will receive this grant in full.
- Anti-Human Trafficking work. Our office is on the verge of beginning this work. In such a spiritually dark area, much prayer is needed. We are also seeking several grants over the next couple of weeks that are very important for us to be able to establish a strong infrastructure for this new program. Please pray for God to open doors for this transformative work to begin.
- Important meetings: Over the next several days I will be having several very important meetings with individuals who could be very instrumental in helping the larger Christian community in our area become aware of our work as well as opportunities to strategically partner. Please pray for many new bridges to be formed and many new partnerships to result.
- Finally, please pray for a refugee family that we resettled in December. Because of some specific needs they have, it is in their best interest to move to a different part of the city. But they are currently in a lease agreement with their current apartment. Please pray for someone to take over this lease so this refugee family can relocate to a more appropriate area of town.
Well, that is a long list of requests, but each of these is very important and we are so thankful for your faithful partnership through prayer!
